melancholy
upon our bird--the Greeks, or at least the Athenians, and it is of
them we speak--were perhaps the very gayest people that ever danced
upon the earth--absolute Frenchmen. The very sprightliness of their
temper, however, by the universally prevailing law of contrast, may
have induced in them a fondness for sad and doleful legends; and we
confess, for our own part, that while we from our hearts admire the
poetical beauty and elegance of their various fables, we do not a
little disrelish the constant vein of melancholy which pervades them
all. Not the least sad of their fictions is that which relates to the
nightingale; a story that has found its way--and even more universally
the opinion of the bird's music which it implied--amongst all the
nations whom Greece has instructed and civilised.

But we have yet another reply to the question, 'Why do most people
call the nightingale's a melancholy song?' It is heard by night,
'whilst our spirits are attentive,' and the solemn gloom of the hour
influences the judgment of the ear; for another false impression,
which like the monster Error of Spenser, has bred a thousand young
ones as ill-favoured as herself, ascribes melancholy to night. There
is no good reason why we should think thus of the night, still less
that the impression should influence our judgment in other matters;
and we owe no small thanks to those who have endeavoured to reclaim to
their proper uses these misdirected associations, and to teach, that

'In nature there is nothing melancholy;'

but on the contrary,

'Healing her wandering and distempered child,
She pours around her softest influences,
Her sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Her melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid the general dance and harmony;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonised
By the benignant touch of love and beauty.'

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Note by Coleridge._--'The passage in Milton possesses an
excellence far superior to that of mere description. It is spoken in
the character of the Melancholy Man, and has, therefore, a dramatic
propriety. The author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the
charge of having alluded with levity to a line of Milton's.'

THE TEA-COUNTRIES OF CHINA.

About four years ago, Mr Fortune, author of _T